


Causa sui

by Ruta



Series: Causa sui [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Family Drama, Parentlock, Post-The Final Problem
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-19 07:38:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9427070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruta/pseuds/Ruta
Summary: At the dawn of his fifty-four year in the world, Sherlock Holmes finds himself coming to terms with the ghosts of his past.It seems just and fatally proper that the person who will force him to do so is a miniature version of an old friend, the dearest to his heart after Molly.





	

Norbury _._

_It was that word to slow his steps, after he, in his state of restlessness and agitation, was moving away from her._

_Now, at the dawn of his fifty-four year in the world, Sherlock Holmes finds himself coming to terms with the ghosts of his past. It seems just and fatally proper that the person who will force him to do so is a miniature version of an old friend, the dearest to his heart after Molly._

_But that thought is unjust, is it not so?_

_Rosamund Watson is not a miniature version of anyone. She is a whole-person and although there is so much of Mary Watson in her - in the curl usually proud of her mouth, in the deep wisdom of her mercurial gaze, in the biting and extrovert and authoritarian personality, in the way she is there, standing in the middle of the living room and is ready to fight for the values_ _she believes in, the posture of a soldier and a persistent frown that leaves no room for doubt on her paternity - even so, there are unexplored islands in the sea of her individuality that make her a unique human being and unencumbered by what her parents are, represent to him._

_"I want you to tell me the truth and I want you to do it now. I know that you lied to him, to me, to all of us. At last I know, but I want to know why. There is always a reason and I'm dying to hear yours."_

_He observes her without blinking. He looks at her and the memories swoop down on him with the inevitability of Sisyphus boulder. He remembers the day she was born, the intimate happiness suffusing Mary’s face when she held her, the quiet determination in her eyes as she said her silent vote -_ I will protect you. I'll protect you, little one _. He remembers the first time he brought her to the shooting range and the mixed feelings that filled him, as he put in her hands her first gun, teaching her how to wield it and then use it._

_He remembers and remembers and remembers. Eighteen years dissolve in an explosion of segmented images and then reassemble themselves into the young woman in front of him. Angry. Betrayed. Desperate. Pertinacious._

_Sherlock closes his eyes while an intolerable burden rests on his chest and rips and cuts everything that's inside. "You will not like the truth."_

_Rosamund shrugs with practical conviction. "It's obvious that I will not, but the current situation is not a better perspective. I want to change it,_ I have to _."_

 _"Why would you -_ oh _. Naturally. You love him. " It all makes sense. Not that it didn’t before, but this new detail is decisive, it adds a further perspective to the context, affecting the narrative framework._

_"I love him," she says with quiet resolution. Her eyes, big and loud and clear, inspired by the enormity of the feeling that her words have leaked out. "From always, I think."_

_The terror that is gripping the pit of his stomach is bilious. Anger and guilt have turned against him. They are old comrades in adventure, familiar almost as much as John. "But he’s your friend. Hamish is your best friend. "_

_"Yes, he is. He is my family and I love him in so many different ways that complete me and make me the person I am, but over the years the various ways in which I loved him didn’t really have given way to a possible fragment of love to be reserved to other people. This sentiment is absolute." Her gaze slips on the living room furniture in a gentle caress, affectionate before bolting to the corners, hardens. "I love him and I saw how_ _he exhausted himself looking for a solution_ _, day after day, in those solitary walks of endless wanderings, losing himself in his books as if he hoped that it was enough to catapult him into them to live what he thinks has been torn from him - his pain breaks my heart."_

_If it would do any good, he could indulge in a comforting gesture to calm her agitation. But it wouldn’t help and he's not even sure she would allow him, so... He makes a face, puts his arms behind the back and clasping his hands. "The truth will not be kind or gentle or compassionate."_

_"It never is."_

_"If he knew what I did to protect him, what peaks I got to climb to do so, the discovery would erase everything we know”_ love _“about him, would destroy him. It would destroy his mother and his sister and- "_

 _"_ You _. It would destroy_ you _."_

_"Yes." Sherlock swallows with the impression of returning to breathe, so great is the relief that she has understood. If they embark on this path, they will do together. What remains to be determined is in what form will happen: as enemies or allies? "You look just like her, your mother. Mary. "_

_"I know. You say it often. "_

_"Not often enough, perhaps. She would have done the same."_

_"Put you in the corner?" Her smile, however small and tired, remains one slice of sun in the land of shadows where he is sinking himself into._

_"Convince myself to be better, force me to do the_ _righteous_ _thing," he corrects. "But how do you do the righteous thing when your options are not fair? How do you make an impossible choice, knowing that in any case you shall bruise your friends, the people you care about?" His hand raises to loosen his collar, but ultimately finds place in his hair in an unambiguous gesture of anxiety. (And he knows it. Of body language, after all, he has made a cornerstone of his work.)_

_"How do you do?" Rosamund asks with a spark of interest and for a moment he may be lulled into an illusion. To pretend that this is an evening like any other and he is teaching her one of the abstract concepts of life, imparting a lesson that she will then decide whether to retain or reject._

_"There is a list of pros and cons. You must act on the sense of duty, the promises you made. One day many years ago, during the reception of a marriage, I made a vow. I swore that I would protect your family with all that I was, with my own life, if necessary. In the coming years, I made a similar promise to Molly, after the birth of our children." Sherlock stops and the deception vanishes in a sudden and painful awareness. That's not a normal night, Rosamund is no longer the little girl who looked up to him as the trees look towards the sun, and after his confession everything will change in a terrible and absolute manner. There will be no way back. Behind his back, he closes his hands into fists._

_She takes a step toward him. "Sherlock-"_

_He makes a brief mention of denial and Rosamund falls silent, freezing in place._

_"At that time," he resumes in a low, pasty voice, "I couldn’t know that I would have to defend them from the mire of a portentous and invisible enemy against which it was impossible to win, even resorting all the weapons in my arsenal. I didn’t know I was supposed to protect them from themselves." He sighs deeply, rubbing his eyes. He doesn’t know how to continue and this bothers him. "It’s a very long story."_

_Rosamund scans his facial expression like a puzzle. She gets near to him and takes his hand. Hers is the hand of an adult, warm and firm - and what happened to the little girl whom hair Molly combed in braids, ponytails and complicated hairstyles? What happened to the little girl who scolded him if he forgot to say 'thank you' or 'please'?_

_"We have time," Rosamund says and he finds that little girl in the features of her pale and serious face, yet serene. "We have all night."_

*

  
"Did you know that Sherlock is your father's middle name? Technically speaking, of course."

They are in the living room - he's sitting sideways on the arms of the most comfortable chair, she is cross-legged on the floor.

It'a a rainy afternoon in mid-October. The world outside of the windows is a ditch of water falling from a leaden sky, pouring in rivulets of dirt in the busy streets and with a humidity that sticks to the bones, thaws in the condensed breath of hurried passers; the interior of 221B Baker Street, however, is a fireplace in a comfortable living room, suspended in a companionable silence, a third edition in mediocre conditions of the _Critique of Pure Reason_ and the best chocolate in the world - that of Mrs. Hudson.

Hamish turns a page without looking up from the book he’s reading. "Don’t talk nonsense."

Even so, without looking, he can physically feel the irritation that is going through her face like lightning, the word ‘idiot’ that dance on her lips bent downwards.

"Look," Rosamund insists and pats a precise point of an old square piece of yellowed paper that looks like a graduation certificate. "It is written here, very clearly. William Sherlock Scott Holmes, born in -"

"Died on January 15, 2012," he interrupts her, craning his neck for a better look at what she is pointing and widening his eyes the next moment. "It's a death certificate. Why my father has got one?"

Rosamund’s look is eloquent, the raised eyebrow can summarize perfectly the 'I told you so' and 'you were wrong, as usual' that are her favorite phrases, especially when she can direct them to him. "The more appropriate question is why he _keeps_ it."

No, Hamish would like to reply when she hands it to him, there is another even more interesting question, and that is why at the bottom, where it is required the signature of the health care medical office, is subscribed by Dr. M. Hooper.

"Oh."

This time she immediately captures his full attention. "What else have you found?"

He watches without blinking the line of her thin back, bent over the box in which she was rummaging - dusty memories, letters and trinkets collected over a ten-year career spent to solve criminal cases -, the brightest shade of red knitted sweater she wears, the curly blond hair falling and hanging down round the sides of her face, hiding it.

"You've got one, too."

"I have a death certificate?"

"Don’t be deliberately obtuse," she snorts, like any other time he irks her purposefully with stupid questions. "You have a middle name. Two, to be precise. "

"A middle name?"

She shrugs, seraphic, unaware of the state of confusion that has just triggered by that revelation. "Apparently."

Hamish sets aside Kant with an inner sigh and kneels beside her on the carpet. _Hamish A. Victor Holmes,_ someone has scrawled in an old-fashioned handwriting on his birth certificate. In the autumn of his twelve years seems implausible find out that he has a middle name, let alone have two. "What do you think is the A.?"

"Dunno. You could always do the obvious thing. Asking to the parties concerned."

He shakes his head and in the movement, the dark fringe annoyingly falls over one eye. His father had to take him to the barber, but a sudden case has retained him to Scotland Yard.

 _Ask_ , he thinks to himself with an elusive feeling that is an amalgam of bitterness and self-irony. Sherlock Holmes has always an answer to the questions from the rest of the world, but he tends to ignore with blatant frequency each of his.

*

"Hugo," is the immediate response of Sherlock Holmes and it sounds like the recorded message from an answering machine.

"The writer?" He inquires, dumbfounded.

His father holds out a hand imperiously. Hamish mechanically hands to him the preparation, his lanky body stretched out on the kitchen table in the agonizing wait for a reply.

Sherlock murmurs thoughtfully scraps of reasoning as he analyzes the biological sample on the slide under the microscope beam.

"So you named me Victor after him?"

The vague mumble goes off in a hiss of disappointment. Without requesting it, another hand, small and white as a moonbeam, passes him a second mixture. The hand belongs to a little girl with a pointed face and a pert nose, with large, dark, intelligent eyes, dressed in blue. A few moments later the frown on his father’s forehead disappears and a smile of satisfaction is placed on his lips.

He gets up from his stool with a triumphant exclamation, takes Agnes in his arms and lifts her into the air as if she were made of paper, dragging her with him on a swing that makes her break out in trilling laughter of pure delight.

Leaning against the side of one of the sliding doors, Hamish observes the scene, feeling like an unwanted guest, the third wheel. He knows that objectively it is stupid and wrong feel the way he does - greed, jealousy, disappointment - but cannot help it.

He turns his back on them and goes to his room.

"What did you want to talk to me?" His father asks the next morning, while pouring in one of the cups of the porcelain service with the map of the UK the coffee for his mother - he does it every time she has a shift night, one of his rare demonstrations of affection: prepare breakfast and bring it to her in bed.

Hamish bites a corner of toast, not really feeling the sense of hunger, avoiding the eyes that are the same as his, but whose powers of observation is multiplied endlessly. "Nothing," he murmurs, his eyes downcast. 

* 

"Frankenstein," his father says with a serious and conscientious tone, the kind of voice that he uses to impress Agnes teachers on the rare occasions when his mother allows him to participate in parent-teacher meetings.

Behind him, Rosamund’s laughter, perched on the windowsill like a barn owl, is so sudden and genuine that makes his ears red.

He turns shooting a glance at her and she mimes the words mute 'mad scientist', to which he rolls his eyes and decides that for that day, the mystery that hides behind his middle name can wait without becoming the target of Rosamund Watson jokes. 

* 

The only time he tries to ask her mother, Molly gives him a sad smile of apology, her eyes wrinkled for too many sleepless nights of double shifts at Barts. "I wish I could say it's in honor of Victor Babes, but it is not so."

When he insists, her expression becomes contrite, retreating behind a wall of shadows and melancholy. The hand that rests on his shoulder is as light as a feather and comforting, but her voice has the taste and weight of old secrets. "It's a story that it is not for me to tell."

The only flaw of Molly Hooper Holmes is also one of her best qualities: it is impossible to bear against her any kind of animosity or resentment.

*

One night, after a particularly vivid nightmare did wake him, with cold sweat chills and an incipient hammering behind the eyeballs, Hamish pulls back the sheets tangled and tiptoes down the stairs to fetch a glass of water.

He doesn’t remember the details of the dream, but he cannot shake off the after-taste that it left on the tip of the tongue: bitter and disturbing.

He knows that there was a ghostly woman, sinister as death, with a sing-song voice. He vaguely remembers a well and nothing else, only the darkness of a starless night.

He becomes aware of their presence when he is already on the landing. Someone is discussing. It is not his intention to eavesdrop, but the desire to know is too strong to overpower him with thoughts that relate to ethics, to the concept of right and wrong.

The voices belong to his father and his uncle and he guesses immediately that this is a conversation that he shouldn’t hear, especially if, judging by the unusual air of solemnity, concerns national security affairs.

"You really cannot see," Mycroft is saying, "or you deliberately avoid to face the reality?"

"There's nothing to deal with. Nothing that we need to discuss or that can justify your presence at this hour of the night."

"I checked. Molly is at Barts and the children are asleep."

"They're light sleepers."

"I wonder from whom they have inherited that," Mycroft says sarcastically.

"Get to the point."

"It's happening what we feared. We have to prepare a plan of action before it occurs the worst. "

His father bursts into a raucous laughter. " _This_ is the worst that could happen, which brings me back to the initial declaration. Nothing happened," he punctuates gritting his teeth.

Silence. Hamish ventures a look into the room. He watches how his uncle rests on the table an envelope, open it and place in an ordered range the documents it contains. They look like photographs.

"This is nothing for you?"

"Where did you find them?" His father replies coolly, but with less composure than usual. If Hamish didn’t know best, he would believe that, despite all efforts to hide it, he is aghast, almost frightened. How awful must be the situation to make him react that way?

"Please, brother mine, don’t insult my intelligence. You've tried to keep it hidden from me. Why?"

"I will not have this conversation with you, especially since it is not strictly necessary."

"You will or I will find myself compelled to act accordingly."

"You wouldn’t dare."

"Tell me." The voice of his uncle becomes dangerously low, similar to an intimidation which is also a provocation. "Molly is aware of the recreational activities in which indulges your seed?"

They are talking of _them_ , of him and Agnes. The beating of his heart becomes the only source of noise in the apartment.

He catches the words ‘young’ and ‘doesn’t understand’, but the hasty response of his father, the unmistakable attempt with which he is trying to play down, is a stone that adds up to the others that have settled at the bottom of his throat.

"Children rarely know. The problem is that they don’t stay long that way. There comes a time when you cannot excuse what they did, granting extenuating circumstances due to young age. This doesn’t plead valid reasons to particular behaviors and impulses. Process of cause and effect. For now these are minor ripples in the water, but if you delay and don’t take a position, the consequences will be catastrophic. "

"Remember who you're talking about."

"That's exactly why I'm here."

"To threaten me?"

"Warn you."

"I will not let history repeat itself. I will not allow. "

"And I'll do the same, if it were to become necessary. I will do what I must, as always. "

*

Hamish doesn’t remember the precise moment when he realizes that his sister is different from any other person he knows.

She is not like Molly - in the hectic chaos that tends to be the life of the 221B, his mother is a blind spot, with soft smiles and precious resources, always willing ears to listen and unsuspected dialectical skills able to bring into line even the ego of his uncle (father's words, not his) - or like Sherlock - a thunderstorm and multifaceted genius, irascible attitude, a mine that hides secret veins, inexhaustible enough to inspire the courage to explore its depths.

He is not a expert of personality, but Agnes peculiarity has something dissimilar from the peculiarity of anyone else. The difference is subtle, but unmistakable. Once detected, he cannot help but notice it. The resulting pain is acute and digs holes and tunnels deep inside him, throws discomfort and malaise on every memory.

There is no date to be referenced. The discovery is not immediate, rather it is the slow realization of a reality that becomes true in stages, taking concrete form with gruesome details.

He is eleven years old, when after an afternoon spent playing together, locked in the readapted apartment of the 221C, Agnes classmate bursts into tears (the day after is the victim of an unexplained accident with the swing, fracture of the humerus); at thirteen, when the canaries of the school die suddenly and the blame is given to an early frost (the memory of his sister, standing in front of the bars, holding the feed box, the empty and motionless gaze with which she considered the small dead bodies on the bottom of the cage).

The acceptance comes later, at seventeen.

And his sister, now, the things she does and the many things that she isn’t, have become his dark, secret obsession.

*

Norbury _, she says without hesitation._

 _She observes him stopping as if a spring inside him got stuck. His back stiffens and his shoulders sag imperceptibly as under an invisible weight. (Norbury. A memory of her childhood: she is sitting in her father armchair and Sherlock watches her with inscrutable eyes, as happens whenever a dangerous thought occupies his mind. No, not a thought, but a feeling. "Promise me that you will use it, if you think_ _it necessary_ _.")_

_Until a moment ago, he was ready to slingshot out of the apartment, immerse himself in the cold London night to run to a place that others have described as a hell for the living, but that, in her personal opinion is closer to being a Château d'If._

_She knows that Hamish is in danger. She has known that for a while, months,_ years _, if she wanted to be completely honest with herself and admit the creeping feeling that has besieged her peace from immemorial time._

_She knows where Hamish is, what he's trying to do and even if the thought makes sizzle the subcutaneous layer of her epidermis for the apprehension, she resists the impulse of the heart to accommodate that of reason. It will not help him in any way, to let Sherlock follow him and obstacles his plans._

_She can help Hamish. She can be helpful and the best way is to uncover the Pandora's box. Or rather, let his father uncover it._


End file.
